Photo: EPA / SAUL LOEB / EFE
By: EFE
Friday, September 20
Jill Biden, the brand new first lady of the United States
Jill Biden, the brand new first lady of the United States, will make history by keeping her teaching job despite the demands of her new role , in which she will surely mark a strong contrast with her predecessor, Melania Trump.
Jill Biden, from 69 years, she has dedicated her life to education. She started as a secondary school teacher for children with special needs and during her husband’s vice-presidency in 2009 combined a busy institutional schedule with her work as an English teacher at a university college in Virginia, where as first lady she will continue to carry out her work.
That decision, to continue maintaining her labor independence, in addition to staying in charge of the first lady’s office, is historic.
“ For me it is difficult to consider my decision in historical terms, because I already taught é during the eight years in which I was second lady , “she explained last month in an interview with comedian Stephen Colbert.
Despite the intense political career of Joe Biden, who tried to run for the Presidency on several occasions and was Vice President of Barack Obama for eight years, Jill has developed her career as a teacher and it has been during this difficult year an advocate for the importance of educators during the pandemic.
The first lady obtained in 2007 a Ph.D. in education, a degree he worked for for six years, but which was recently the subject of misogynistic criticism from a columnist opinion of the Wall Street Journal newspaper.
The column, full of macho comments, criticized Jill Biden – who has publicly said that her doctorate is one of the achievements that makes her most proud – for publicly using that honorary title that she holds, despite not be a “doctor or have helped bring someone into the world.”
Former First Lady Michelle Obama responded to those criticisms by recalling that “there is no better example” of a hardworking person than Jill.
“For eight years I watched Dr. Jill Biden do what many professional women do on a daily basis. Successfully manage more than one responsibility, from their duties as a teacher to their official duties in the White House or their role as mother, wife and friend, ”said Michelle Obama.
That attack is an appetizer of what awaits Jill Biden in the White House, shaping a sometimes thankless role, which has been dealt with inside the corsets traditionally reserved for women and that other First Ladies have wanted to reform.
Jill and Joe met at 1975 on a date arranged by the second’s brother. Jill was still finishing her English degree at the University of Delaware and was separating from her first husband. Joe Biden had just spent three tough years after the death of his first wife, Neilia Hunter Biden, in a traffic accident, in which his daughter Naomi, still a baby, also died.
The two were married in 1977 in a discreet Catholic ceremony in the United Nations chapel in New York.
Jill came to replace the emptiness of the Biden family to become, not only as a wife of the then senator, but also as a mother to his children, Beau and Hunter. “He put the pieces back together. He gave me my life and a family back, “said Joe Biden in an interview.
After four years of marriage, the only daughter of both was born: Ashley Biden, activist and social worker very close to the recently inaugurated president.
Jill, who grew up in the womb From a middle-class family in Philadelphia, she has tried to maintain a discreet and independent role from politics that she has lived through on a daily basis for decades, first in her husband’s years as senator and later as vice president.
Her students call her “Doctor B” and will soon be faced with the dilemma of dealing with the first lady of the United States, that will combine a work agenda that could prioritize issues such as the fight against cancer, the coronavirus pandemic or childhood.
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